Friday, October 29, 2010

And I'm not even talking about election season. The REAL most wonderful time is when all the major team sports are all playing. For a brief, shining moment each November, NCAA football, the NFL, the NBA, MLB and the NHL are all playing. And this year my favorite teams are doing well.

My Steelers have handled the absence of Big Ben rather well...

My Blazers are 2-0...

My Beavs are .500 after a tough schedule, but Coach Riley has one of the very best (no exaggeration) win-loss records in November and December. He is an excellent coach. Maybe not that hot of a recruiter, but an excellent coach. He can take the so-so talent he's able to bring to Corvallis and coach them into being excellent ballplayers. Unfortunately, it usually takes about half the season to get there...

And then there's my Giants. Two World Series games, two wins. WOoooOoOoo!

Ya kinda get the sense that this guy hasn't been out west too much, huh?

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And then there's this. His Awesomeness, NJ Governor Chris Christie, shall visit my humble state to stump for Chris Dudley. Haley Barbour is coming along too, for what it's worth. But having Chris and Chris on the same stage could induce an awesomeness overload. If you go to a campaign event, be sure to bring a spacetime patch kit with you in case the universe starts to unravel in the face of such concentrated awesomeness.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

You're getting very, very sleepy. Your eyelids are so heavy. You can barely keep them open. Relax. Everything is going to be OK. You're getting very, very sleepy. Your eyelids are so heavy. The platter of snacks on you lap - the ones your bought with your food stamps - are also getting heavy. So heavy. You probably couldn't lift them off of you if you tried. So don't even try. It's OK. You're getting very, very sleepy. Your eyelids are so heavy. You really don't have to go out there and vote. Pelosi said our democrats will surely hold the majority. So it'll be OK if you don't vote. Those Tea Party people make a lot of noise, but there really aren't that many of them. They can't really influence the elections. Relax. You don't really have to get off the couch and vote. ACORN and the unions will get enough votes. Just relax. Yes. That's it. You should have a pizza delivered. Doesn't that sound good? Maybe try Guitar Hero again. That is so much more fun than voting. Your vote isn't really needed. Besides, it is raining. You don't like rain. Just stay inside and relax. Have another snack that your taxpaying neighbors bought for you. Yes. Listen to the rain tinkling on your window. Soooooo peaceful... Let's turn on eneMaS-NBC and watch the election results....

---------------------------------This is the first time I've made an animated .gif! Yay for me!

UPDATE: Bummer! It ain't moving! It works if you click on it, but is static when posted to the blog. :(

UPDATE x2: They can not stop me! Change the tag from "a href=" to "img src=" does the trick.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

So we're already hearing reports of buggered up voting machines in Nevada and North Carolina, among others. Now Oregon is feeling left out. We ain't got no fancy video thingermajigs to vote with. We're feeling totally left out of all the fraudulent fun.

But wait!

Oregon's observation of Daylight Savings Time is hardwired in the Oregon Revised Statutes to end on the last Sunday of October. Of course the feds changed their standard a while back, so this year it will end on November 7. Hmmm... On election day, Oregon will "officially" be one hour off the rest of the country... Oregon officials say "we'll just observe the federal standard." In other words "Hey, we're government! We'll break our own law whenever we dang well feel like it!" Hate to say it, but just agreeing with the feds, and waiting 'til the 7th to change our clocks probably makes the most sense. At least until our legislature quits fussing about squirrel habitat and "cultural competency counselors" and gets around to changing our DST law...

But wait!

What about the lawyers? What about the putz who barely loses his race then wants to sue saying that all the ballots received after 7:00 or 8:00 or whatever are technically "late" and therefore disqualified? Since we vote by mail, what about the time on the postmarks? After the ballots are out of their "secrecy" envelopes, how does one determine when they were received? How would one eliminate "late" ballots from a recount? How does the whole thing NOT become a complete cluster?

I dunno how this will all play out. I expect it really won't matter much. But if it does become an issue, I'll only give you one guess as to who will benefit. And you'll be right.

Monday, October 25, 2010

See, most years he runs practically unopposed. Some no-name inbred hilldweller usually appears on the ballot as an erstwhile "opponent" but the outcome is pretty much pre-ordained. This year things are different. He has a real challenger with real funding. I haven't seen any polls, but an informal poll of HOW FRACKIN' MUCH ADVERTISING ol' Petey is putting out there tells me that he's at least worried about it being close. Seriously, EVERY commercial break on the righty talk station is a Pete spot. I'm not much of a TV watcher, but trying to meet some friends and watch a Beaver game=Pete ad during every commercial break.

Pete has a multi-faceted reputation. He tries to come off as a genuine but non-psycho liberal - the kind of guy who would sit down and have a burger with a conservative and be pleasant the whole time. That had worked pretty well for many years. I guess there's no need to be a d*ck when one's looking at winning by 35% or so. But now that he's challenged, wow, the negative attacks are off the charts. No more Mr. Nice Guy "I'd Be a Hippie Long-Hair if I Weren't Bald" Guy.

Another aspect of Petey is his Joe Everybody image as the guy who lives next door and does things like go shooting and build decks in the backyard. He proves it in his TV ads by always showing him tooling around in his ugly old mid-'60s Mopar (I can't tell if it is a Dart or a Valiant). Fine. I guess it's better than gold teeth and an Escalade. But it doesn't jibe with his Captain Greeno the Ecowarrior schtick. C'mon. Everybody that has owned or just been around an old Mopar like his knows that it has a slant-6 and a 1bbl Carter carb. Old Mopar slant-6 engines are the solution to the oil shortage - they drip out 3 times as much oil on the ground than you actually put in them. Just put a bucket under an old Mopar and OPEC would be out of business. And that 1bbl carb - it's about as big around as the cardboard core at the middle of your TP roll. Doesn't seem like there's any way it could flow enough fuel to run rich. But they do. The unburnt fumes comin' out the tailpipe of an old Mopar will make your nose run and your eyes bleed. It's a fact. And it ain't very "green."

So how does Petey respond to this challenge? Well, the negativity has already been mention. But now he's talking about impeaching Chief Justice Roberts (see link above) because of the Citizens United case. Petey is challenged, and he wants to blame it on that spooky, scary outsider money pouring into his opponent's campaign, and all that spooky, scary outsider money was enabled by the Supreme Court's decision.

My advice, Pete? Take a look in the mirror instead of blaming the Supreme Court. We're getting tired of you.

PS - Pete tried to claim that the Roberts court overturns precedents for politcal reasons, which Volokh disputes. Heh. I thought that was kind of the point of a living, breathing Constitution. Right, Pete?

Saturday, October 23, 2010

I'd been working for quite a while on "reverse engineering" this song by playing the different instruments and recording track-by-track in Audacity. It is darned hard. Not just the technical aspects of getting it to sound right, but the musicianship is really hard to match. Then I noticed the new beta version of Audacity has a "remove vocals" effect. I tried it on the original song and it got rid of most of the vocals. So I stopped trying to pretend I'm a musician and just added my lyrics. Which, of course are out of my "decent" singing range and through a crummy mic. But there was also a lot of reverb that the effect didn't catch. So you can kinda hear Jim in the background here and there, lamenting what I've done to his great song...

Hear the call to prayer and I'm on my way,
I've got a name, Barry Hussein.
Like the braying ass with his bale of hay,
I've got it made, I've got it made.
I hate this country just like my daddy did
And his dad before him, and my momma Stan.
Putting it down the fairway,
Putting it down the fairway,
Playing some golf then I'm gonna go get high.

Like the north wind whistlin' down the sky
I've got a song, I've got a song, MMM MMM MMM
Like the whippoorwill and the baby's cry
Whippoorwill? What's that? Hope it don't attack!
It's all about me and I sing it loud
Economy goin' nowhere, Michelle so proud
Puttin' it down the fairway
Puttin' it down the fairway
Playing some golf then I'm gonna go get high

Secret Service take good care of me

Like the commie I am and I'll always be
I've got a dream, my father's dream
Tea Partiers out there actin' whacked
Always givin' me flak, just because I'm black
I'll give you a bailout if you want me to
If you're on a vacay, I'll go with you
Puttin' it down the fairway
Puttin' it down the fairway
Playing some golf then I'm gonna go get high

Dear Glenn, Sean, Bill O' or even, um, Shep... I ask you for only 10 seconds of airtime on Fox News so that I can say something vaguely tangentially indirectly derogatory about mooselimbs. My life would be a lot less stressful knowing that I'll never have to appear on NPR.

Friday, October 15, 2010

Kinda lacking inspiration for "Obama Sucks" type posts lately. Or posts of any sort, to be more honest. So let's shift gears. We are out in the middle of nowhere, sitting around a campfire... The occasional owl hoot or fluttering bat are the only sounds - except for that crunchy, dry leaf sound coming from off in the distance. But that's just a deer, right?... We're telling ghost stories... OK, I'll go first...

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It is 1986. I'm a skinny junior in high school with a '69 Camaro and an almost-mullet haircut... My girl and I (well, I thought we were an item - she wasn't quite convinced yet) were bored and just kind of driving around the edges of town...

Actual pic of Granite Hill Cemetery

Granite Hill Cemetery is on a fairly steep hillside, with a network of twisty roads traversing it. It is little used and falling into neglect... Grass has given way to tall, ugly weeds... Hardly any flowers or other tokens of rememberance... Patches of blackberries have colonized big chunks of land... The trees are droopy and festooned with moss... At night it seems like it is ALWAYS foggy... Sometimes our little circle of friends would meet out here after dark and play capture the flag - but always in groups. I get this crazy idea bouncing off the inside of my brain: "take her up to the top of the cemetery and try to get her scared!"... So I pull in. I'm already a little spooked, 'cuz this place is JUST FREAKIN' CREEPY but keeping a pretty good poker face.

My Camaro, with its way-too-big camshaft, gurgles and farts as I slowly drive us up to the top. The little roads all look pretty much alike. I have to backtrack a few times, because only one fork goes to the top. We get to the clearing at the top and park. Shut off the engine...

"I'm scared, let's get out of here already!" as she scoots closer...

"It's working!!" I think to myself...

A little scritchy noise... I roll down the window a tad... Unmistakable animal footfalls...

"Let's GO!"

A momma deer and a fawn come out of the brush and walk by, surprisingly close.

"Ha! It's just a deer!"

"This isn't funny!"

A cottontail rabbit emerges from the blackberries. I didn't even know there were any around here. The whole scene is actually rather peaceful... The moon is giving enough light through the cloudless sky that we can see pretty well now that our eyes are adjusting... We sit and watch the critters for a while...

A flickering light appears in the distance...

"Alright, I'm a fraidy-cat. You've proved your point. Can we go now?"

The light gets closer...

She is moving from scared to irate... And scooting away from me... Dang!...

Sound of a train horn... "Relax, it's just a train headlight"...

She lets out a sigh of relief and the train passes by us a couple hundred yards away...

The flickering light remains...

"I wonder what's up with that little light? I'm going to go find out what it is." (scared but trying to act cool through it)

"You're gonna WHAT?"

Start the car... Drive towards the light..

"You're pissing me off! I want to go home, NOW!"

Wrong little road, try again... Finally...

A little kid's grave... That little white wire fence stuff that people put around their flowerbeds marks the shape of a small gravesite... Transformer toys and such sit silently within the wire boundaries of their eternal playpen... A pinwheel is staked in the ground near the headstone... Moonlight intermittently reflects off the spinning blades of the pinwheel... "That's what we were seeing!"

"But there is NO wind! Why is it spinning!?!" She asks, while I stifle my growing fears... "You're right. This is weird. I can't read the headstone, so I'm gonna move the car and aim the headlights at it."

"Why don't you just aim the headlights at the exit and get us the hell out of here!"

Now illuminated, I can see the etchings in the stone marker... The pinwheel continues to spin in the oh-so-still evening air...

I read aloud the kid's name... Tension builds... Then I read aloud his date of birth... I'm genuinely scared now... I read the date of his passing... "...1987"

"But we're still in 1986!!!" she exclaims. When I realize she's right, I abandon my fake machismo and we run to the car. Tires burning, I drift around corners and speed away like life depended on it... Maybe it did...

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OK. That was a true story. Clearly there was a typo on the marker but that possibility didn't even enter our fear-addled brains. Now it's your turn. Tell us the creepiest thing you've experienced and drop a link in the comments... If you dare...

Imagine the publicity coup if Rush and/or Sarah Palin gathered the nickels from under the sofa and built Cousin George a proper house!

I'd like to suggest this to him but I'm not a Rush 24/7 subscriber so my email would no doubt be lost in the sea of spam and hate he gets daily. If you're a subscriber and have access to the privileged subscriber-only email address, please suggest this to Rush.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

I'm pretty sure today is the Most Boring Tuesday Ever. It'd be great if I could think of something to write about, but I can't. So I'll give you a little mood music and direct you to some other things I've been entertained by lately...

Monday, October 11, 2010

Happy Columbus Day! All you whiny leftoids need to get over it - we're not going back to Europe and letting the new world revert to a semi-savage land of tribal warfare. Veni, Vidi, Vici and now there's a Starbucks at every intersection. Amen, brother. If you think our ancestors were a little rough on the natives, consider what Imperial Japan or the Soviets would have done to them. Yikes. Instead of running casinos and selling fireworks, they'd all be either slaves or just plain dead. So go thank a white european-American for preserving the Native American way of life.

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By now you've no doubt heard that some schnickelfritz threw a book at barry over the weekend. To this yet un-named spitweasel I make the following statement:

Yo, fartbreath, knock it off! You can't go around throwing stuff at the President of the United States. That ain't proper at all! We need that guy out there in front of the camera, not skulking in fear. Every time he flaps lip we win more congressional seats. Thanks to you, he's gonna be in hiding getting intensive PTSD treatments and sobbing alone in a corner about how downright mean America is instead of embarrassing himself and his party. So channel your rage into something more constructive, like throwing books at Chris Matthews.

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My Beavs pulled off a nice road victory this weekend over the (formerly) #9 team in the country. Now we're at #24 in the AP poll, and 29th or somesuch in the Coaches' poll. Yet the computer poll shows us at #7, mainly because we're 3-2 despite a BRUTAL schedule. Why the discrepancy? Conspiracy-mongers are saying that the powers-that-be are trying to keep OSU's ranking down so Boise State's victory over us won't seem like a big deal, paving the way for Some Crappy Team from the south to play Some Crappy Team from the Great Lakes area to give us a so-called National Champion that is really no champion at all but merely good for attracting TV ratings.*

Do I believe that? Hope and Change, baby!

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* I charge extra for meandering, paragraph-sized run-on sentences. So you now owe me a dollar.

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Yes, Tim Lincecum is a hippie. I mean, look at the hair, man. He even looks like Joe Cocker falling off the stage thing in this pic. You can't get much hippier than Joe Cocker. But I'm willing to overlook these shortcomings because he's starting tonight for my Giants against the Braves. Besides, he is motivating a new generation of stoners to embrace capitalism by selling "Let Tim Smoke" t-shirts. See? Not all hippies are completely useless.

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

[innominatus] "We're with Honeysuckle Schwartz, People's Delegate to San Francisco City Council for Ward 11 and associate professor of Nutritional Economics at UC Berkeley."

[Honeysuckle Schwartz, in breathy and authoritarian yet cloyingly polite voice that's part Nurse Ratched and part Kathy Bates from Misery] "It is soooo good to have this discussion with you. There has been a lot of misunderstanding, and it would be soooo nice to get it all cleared up."

[i] "First of all, it is being reported that your city is considering a ban on Happy Meal toys. Is this correct?"

[hs] "Children nowadays are increasingly suffering from obesity. Large corporate entities with vast marketing budgets offer enticements to these kids to make unhealthy dietary choices. The children are too young and naive to realize they're being manipulated. Fortunately, the adult, (well 'usually' adult) parents of these kids don't believe in the oppressive 'me parent, you child!' kidrearing beliefs that prevail in less enlightened communities. These youngsters make petulant demands and then get their way. Which leads to obesity and corporate profits. Both bad. Hence the need for government intervention. It's for the best."

[i] "Shouldn't the parents be educating the kids about making good nutritional choices?"

[hs] "Absolutely! It's all about choices!"

[i] "But banning things outright, well, that seems no choice at all."

[hs, beaming smile] "Exactly!"

[i] "Ummm...."

[hs] "One bit of confusion I'd like to clean up is this notion that we are anti-corporatists. That may be true in a broad sense, but really, we're not trying to punish McDonalds."

[i] "OK, can you elaborate?"

[hs] "Cerrrrrtainly! Most of the people in our community are members of non-breeding gendertypes. Therefore, there aren't many kids to nanny. And most of the people in our community live in urban condos, so there are few lawns to mow. So we very much need big corporations like McDonalds to hire all the undocumented 'guests' our city attracts. If the economy were really booming, then yes, maybe we'd like to see Big Beef go down in flames alongside Big Oil and Big Pharma. But that isn't a viable position right now."

[i] "But it still seems you're punishing an industry that you say is so vital."

[hs] "That's one of the main misunderstandings we'd like to clear up. Yes, we intend to ban the Happy Meal toys. But we will not leave them without a substitute. We will provide McDonalds with a taxpayer funded alternative. See, even as we speak, cookie cutters and blocks of tofu are being distributed to all McDonalds affected by our ban. The cookie cutters cut the tofu into exciting educational snacks that the kids just love. So far we have cutters to make tofu shapes of Gaia the Earth Mother, the Gay Avenger, Ché, and one of a polar bear raping an oil company executive. We're having a gathering of folk artists next week to come up with even more cookie cutter ideas."

[i] "You're right. It is important that the public know about this aspect of the story."

[hs] "But I haven't even told you the best part yet. If the kids are really good kids and eat all the way to the middle of the tofu, they'll find a coupon inside for 20% off any purchase at participating marijuana boutiques. Because it is all about making healthy choices!"

One of my dogs got run over by a cement mixer and the other one ran away. Then the house burned down. My car is making funny noises and the IRS says I owe them $1.4 billion. My athlete's foot is flaring up and spreading to other parts of my body. Some malware got onto my computer and now some guy in Nigeria is emptying my bank account and my wife left me to run with a double-amputee neo-pagan chick she met at cirque du soleil.
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OK, none of that is true. I'm just testing to see if this will get a "Great Post! I love your blog! How about a Link Exchange!!" kind of comment.